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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

"Write a blurb!"

Guardian commenter "Degrus" may snap at me that I'm distributing the same post in a slightly different packaging too, but this post (and the subsequent comments) made my brain tick a little. The Guardian quotes Mr. Pack's blog, in which he lists his pet peeves, among which is the following:

When you pick up an attractive looking paperback in the bookshop only to turn it over and find, instead of a blurb, a list of quotes from various wanky publications. Somewhere within these quotes is some vague hint at what the book might be about but I can't be arsed to find it if the publisher can't be arsed to write a blurb.

I'd laugh at the humor, but there's a heavy, annoying truth to this statement. The Guardian goes one to list other reading pet peeves, from crackling book bindings, to repetitive publications of the same book. One pet peeve, though, rubbed off me the wrong way. While I agree with most of the points (especially Mr. Pack's), the comment about nameless protagonists annoyed me. That is, I disagree. And what would the world be without disagreements?

Still, there are scores of frustrating aspects to being a bibliophile. For instance, when the book is really short (in height) but monstrously fat, so you have to seriously break the paper just to be able to read a sentence. Or when the author's name is five times the size of the title. Or a million and a half other little things that we overlook every day. The more I try to come up with annoying things, the worse my mood gets. So I'm going to stop and let the internet take over. Anybody else want to add to this ever-growing list?

1 comment:

  1. I sat and thought about this, about all the things I love about books, and then to come up with what I hate about them....but I have now come to the conclusion that I really am a bookslut, as my friends have said of me.

    Kind Regards,

    Bibi

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